02/20/23 - FlowerGirl - Korie Story_ch's 1.5-2, 3,085 words

[FlowerGirl she/her]

Hi everyone,

I completely changed the conversation between K, her parents, and the government official, so I'm resubmitting that and then submitting ch2. I'm excited to hear what everyone thinks! 

Thanks for reading!

[Little_Dagger she/her]

As I go:

P.1. “entryway” – add comma after (acm)

“into the” – misses a word

“strain. My mother smiles a strained” – maybe use a synonym of strain here?

“most certa” – there could be another explanation?

P.2. “his head” - acm

“back to Byron” – acm

“nods thoughtfully” – acm

]” mother nods” – acm

P.2/3/4 – a lot head shaking – just something I noticed

P.3. One “dangerous” is extra

“how paranoid” – she herself seemed to behave with similar fear of the government back at school, so strange that she thinks so of her mother now

P.4. – “me and sighs” – acm

“shaking my head” – acm

“up to trying” should be “up for”, I think

“As I pack” – acm

“lets go of me” – acm

P.5. I would remove the second “manage it”

“resistance to send letters” should have ” after

“in my mind”- acm

P.5. “She writing” – “is” is missing

“Byon” should be “Byron”

P.9. “Coumpond” should be “Compound”

“but it can’t hurt” – a nice touch here that reminds how dictatorial the society is

“to river”?

“as I walk down the hallway” twice seems redundant

 

Overall:

Yay, it was fun to come back to the story! I think the resistance vs government choice is handled better now, though I wish we had a sentence or two about why K thinks her experience would be different from G’s. Otherwise, it seems like wishful thinking on her part (though perhaps that is the intention?). 

I liked chapter two, though it felt somewhat strange that she was just dumped in the compound without any instructions. Looking forward to figuring out why.

I smiled at the description of the first car ride. I imagine it can indeed be rather terrifying.

Also, I am intrigued by the velvet thing.

Thanks for the submission!

[kais]

Coming into this cold, so please take my comments with a grain of salt

Overall

This reads like a solid outline to about 3/4 of a chapter. When editing, it would be good to sit down and sort out what you want this chapter to do. Is it to get our MC to her government job? To establish how she interacts with authority? What is the purpose of the chapter and how does it move the plot forward? Once you have that, edit to that idea and it will help it go smoother. 

As I go

- pg 1: our MC is asking for a few days to think an offer over, but I'm not entirely sure what the offer is. More information would be useful here

- pg 2: wait she just...accepts?? I feel like I'm missing at least a page of discussion and inner monologue. Maybe a run to the bathroom to have time to think.

- do we get a definition of 'first class' somewhere? Just repeating it over and over without context is confusing

- pg 2: You can’t go with the government <-- but if this is such a big deal surely they'd have had this conversation with her previously? To prepare her for when this day arrived? She should have had some idea of her parents' wishes going in

- pg 3: resistance? Is this the first time we are hearing about this? If so we need more information

- This back and forth between our MC and the parents doesn't make sense. If they knew they'd force her into the resistance then why not do that preemptively before she got found out? Why let her make a choice just to override it?

- pg 4: the way 'the resistance' keeps being discussed makes it sound like a place and not a group of people. But resistances that are any good are never centralized and should be very hard to pin down, especially something like a recruitment center or training area

- if there's a map, wouldn't that be too dangerous? Someone could search their house, find it, and then take out the resistance

- pg 5: if the watch is relevant later, we should get more description of it now

- pg 6: where was the internal debate over defying her parents and going to the government? Where did this decision come from?

- pg 9: redundancy on 'the driver'

- pg 9: Stop right there, you’re not my problem anymore. My job was to river you, not to babysit you.” The driver turns around and walks away <-- A) he said he was her superior, so this doesn't make sense. B.) river? Deliver maybe?

- end of chapter 2: what was the arc for the chapter?

[FlowerGirl she/her]

5 hours ago, Yuliya said:

 

“how paranoid” – she herself seemed to behave with similar fear of the government back at school, so strange that she thinks so of her mother now

 

This is a good point. Thanks!

5 hours ago, Yuliya said:

though I wish we had a sentence or two about why K thinks her experience would be different from G’s. Otherwise, it seems like wishful thinking on her part (though perhaps that is the intention?). 

I'll make sure to explain this better. Thanks for pointing out that this isn't entirely clear.

5 hours ago, Yuliya said:

Yay, it was fun to come back to the story!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for the feedback!

1 hour ago, kais said:

This reads like a solid outline to about 3/4 of a chapter. 

I can definitely see what you're saying here. I'll be sure to fix this.

1 hour ago, kais said:

 pg 2: You can’t go with the government <-- but if this is such a big deal surely they'd have had this conversation with her previously? To prepare her for when this day arrived? She should have had some idea of her parents' wishes going in

- pg 3: resistance? Is this the first time we are hearing about this? If so we need more information

- This back and forth between our MC and the parents doesn't make sense. If they knew they'd force her into the resistance then why not do that preemptively before she got found out? Why let her make a choice just to override it?

- pg 4: the way 'the resistance' keeps being discussed makes it sound like a place and not a group of people. But resistances that are any good are never centralized and should be very hard to pin down, especially something like a recruitment center or training area

 

These are all really good points. I'll definitely be doing some editing where the resistance is introduced.

Thanks for the feedback! 

[Cathy Lim]

Oh wow- did I miss some changes to the beginning of chapter one? As I recall it started with them dodging government officials as school. I like how you've incorporated recommendations I think this is a better direction, but it needs some smoothing over between the beginning where she hates to government to changing her mind and wanting to join the government. Perhaps she just becomes resigned to the fact that she needs to do this for her family now that her powers have been discovered. More like a sacrifice for their betterment. I like that she doesn't know the resistance so she thinks that's not the best option. I would like to see her still hesitant about the government and what they have planned for her. 

Page 1

strain. My mother smiles a strained smile -- sorry, me and my academic writer coming out a lot on this one. I've had it beaten into me to not use the same word too close together- ha ha!

I glance at my parents, expecting them to look excited, this is our family's chance to become first-class after all. -- I feel like we need to see her thought process more here. She's been scared of the government all this time and I don't think she would easily make the jump to joining the government. This section just seemed a bit jarring. 

Page 9

The driver turns back around and continues walking. I start to follow. The driver turns around again and holds up a hand.-- too much turning. Ha ha!

Page 10

As I walk down the hallway no alarms blare, and no government officials come running. Nothing happens as I walk down the hallway.-- 'As I walk down the hallway'

I really like this story. Was having her go to the government part of your original plan or did that shift? Or was she picked up by the resistance? I like the thriller type feel it had in the beginning. Keep that going!

[Ace of Hearts]

Hope you’re having a good day!  Excited to dig into this!

Overall: The exchange between K and her parents reads better here, and in general the chapter (and a half) here does a good job of keeping the stakes high since we know K could be in danger at any moment.

The main think I feel like I’m missing (which I might have mentioned before, so apologies if this is repeated) is what makes this setting distinct from other dystopian YA. What qualities does the government have besides being authoritarian? What’s the symbolism/propaganda they use? The story does a good job of walking me through K’s journey but I don’t feel connected to the world.

Also, like I mention below I’m a bit confused by the ending. Are they planning to shank her on sight? If so, wouldn’t it be easier to kidnap her instead of giving her the choice to come? It certainly seems like they have the power to. In fact, why not kill her in her parents’ house? Why kill her themselves instead of getting guards? And if they don’t actually want to kill her, what’s the deal with the knives?

As I go:

Pg 1. I like that K starts out more hopeful here and gets cues from her parents

Pg 3. I continue to like this dynamic better, but one question I have is why the parents hid the knowledge of the resistance from her until now if they knew it was inevitable

Pg 4-5. This doesn’t quite hit home for me and I wonder if it has to do with the setup earlier in chapter 1. If I get the feeling that K’s main goal as a character is to figure out what happened to her sister from the start of chapter 1, it might be more believable that she totally ignores her parents like this

Pg 6-7. I think I need more on how K is navigating these obvious red flags. Is she convinced that they’re normal? Is she concerned but willing to accept them if it brings her closer to her sister? I don’t want the text to tell us the answer straight up, but we should be able to pick out something from K’s actions and thoughts

Pg 11. Lifted knives towards her aggressively? That feels a little out of place. Even if the plan was to lure her in and kill her, shouldn’t they have guards with guns for that?

[Mandamon he/him]

I thought this was a good start to chapter 2, but I'm not sure it's finished yet. The end of the chapter one is better, but still has a disconnect to me. Now her parents are talking about the resistance and she's thinking something completely different, but we don't really see that interaction. I was not expecting her to just go to the government. I think it could be a good twist, but we need to see more of what's going on in her head with that decision.

The second chapter, I mainly wondered why no one was stopping a girl wandering around a government campus. How did she randomly find that room, and what was going to happen? I feel like the arc of the chapter still needs a conclusion as to what she's stumbled into or why she hasn't been stopped.

 

Notes while reading:

pg 1: "The talents I possess are most certainly my powers"
--pretty obvious.

pg 1: Watch out for comma splices through here. There are a lot.

pg 2: "This could all be a ploy to get you to go willingly”
--have we heard about G before? If not, it would be good to have some prior knowledge to make this a threat

pg 3: “Join the resistance,"
--again, this is pretty sudden.

pg 3: "You’re going to the resistance, and that’s final.”
--this doesn't quite seem right. It's not like "go to your room" or "you're grounded." The goverment is literally coming to take her away, which is a higher threat than her mother's commands.

pg 4: "you’ll want to leave for the resistance "
--there's still a big disconnect between what the MC is thinking about how it's not a bad idea, and mom telling her what to do. There's no acknowledgement that she's thinking something completely different.

pg 4: "it’ll let me keep in touch"
--I'm assuming this is like a phone? In a dystopian world where the government is watching everyone?

pg 5: "let them pull me away."
--Does...she know where she's going?

pg 6: oh, wait. So she's just completely ignoring her parents? Not even trying for the resistance? I did not get that from the last chapter at all.

pg 7: "Maybe I can fix my headache the same way"
--fabric backpacks and complex biological computers are very different things...

pg 8: “I’m your superior,"
--Is this supposed to be B? 

pg 9: "My job was to river you, not to babysit you.”
--Drive? Also, this is the government. There is literally a person for everything that happens.

pg 11: "A pile of cards lies forgotten"
--and then what? This doesn't seem like a full arc for this chapter. I'm also wondering that no one stops a young girl who is wandering around a military base.

[Silk she/her]

P1 “Maybe things will be different for me than they were for G.” Does the protagonist have any reason to actually believe this? At the start of the scene, she’s nervous – and I’m not sure whether you’re planning on changing the previous setup, but as-is it seems like she has reason to be. Maybe more of a “hard sell” from the government guy – or some changes to the previous chapters to make this upward mobility seem like more of a possibility.

That said, I really like the core of the tension here – pitting the character against her own best interests.

P2 I had forgotten that G was a sister. I’m surprised the narrator doesn’t think this is a bigger deal. In her shoes, I’d be afraid and probably pretty angry.

I’m actually kind of surprised that she just accepts – or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m surprised that she doesn’t seem to consider doing otherwise.

P4 “… I’ll need to be picked up early.” Why? Can’t she just say the teleportation didn’t work and call it a day?

I like that this is being set up so that the character does something totally different than we expect, but I feel like I don’t totally understand her thought process here. The way the book’s set up so far says this government is Bad News, so it seems weird to me that she doesn’t even consider escaping.

P6 “B as in one of V’s fifty guards…” It felt a bit weird to me that this person would assume this right away. I’d expect more of a “B who?” kind of reaction.

P7 So… the driver is a stranger and she gets in a car without waiting for him to identify himself?

P 7/8 I really like the description of the car as this exotic and scary thing, but I had no idea that was the case until she got in there. Maybe hang more of a lantern on this when the car first appears so her reaction makes sense for us when she does get inside.

“Wow, grumpy.” On the one hand this is kinda funny, but the narrator is awfully blasé about what would be a huge change in her life even if she didn’t (maybe?) have reason to suspect this government of murdering her sister.

So far, it seems like K was right about not being in as much danger as her parents thought. They don’t seem to be treating her like a prisoner or a threat, or to think she’s very important in general.

I’m honestly a bit confused by the endcap to the chapter. Why are these government officials playing card games with knives?

Overall: I like the way you’ve revised the conversation between the main character and her parents – the main character going with the people who are presumably the bad guys is a fun twist on our expectations and there is the opportunity for a lot of tension there. That said, it seems like she goes along with this decision really easily, so there’s never actually any tension because the outcome doesn’t ever seem to be in question. Partly I think this is because we don’t have a good sense of her emotions for much of the chapter, except for the little bits she actually says outright during dialogue. Partially it’s just because it seems like her going with the government is a done deal – the narrative never contemplates that she might do otherwise.

Also, I think you will need to make some changes to the previous chapters to support the new direction of the chapter. Everything before the discussion with the B points to the government being Very Bad News, the kind that you don’t just walk off with willingly.

The second chapter had a harder time with because it doesn’t really move us forward. I touched on this in my last couple LBLs, but I think that feeling of lack of progress comes from the fact that we don’t really know what the protagonist’s status is. Is she actually a prisoner? Is she in danger? Is the job she thinks is forthcoming going to be offered, is that position actually all it’s cracked up to be? This is another place where getting more of the protagonist’s own emotions could really help, but I also wonder if she might need some other characters or events to bounce off of. She spends most of the chapter effectively by herself, and when she walks in on the card game at the end of the chapter we don’t get any other context clues.